George Frideric Handel’s last two anthems have now been published in their entirety in the Halle Handel Edition, enabling performances to be given from authoritative materials.

The recently-published Vol. 14 in Series III of the Halle Handel Edition – the 100th volume of the Complete Edition – contains Handel’s last works in the anthem genre, so typical of English church music: the “Anthem on the Peace” HWV 266 (267) composed in spring 1749, and the “Foundling Hospital Anthem” HWV 268 composed shortly afterwards. Although they were written for different occasions – HWV 266 for the service of thanksgiving on 25 April in London in the Chapel Royal on the occasion of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle and HWV 268 for the first benefit concert in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital – the works are closely related. They are similar in their religious content, their structure and the musical form of their choral movements, and they both have borrowings of significant music from “Messiah”.

Both anthems are little known, even amongst Handel connoisseurs, and for various reasons were only very seldom performed, probably including the lack of suitable performance material. HHA volume III/14 helps here: firstly, it provides the four movements of the “Peace Anthem” and in the Appendix an early version of the opening movement “How beautiful are the feet” (HWV 266, No. F1), erroneously identified in the Catalogue of works as an independent work with the HWV number 267. Although in the autograph of this early version, the instrumental parts in the last 15 bars are missing (except for the bassi), the reproduction of the complete reconstructed music of the final bars now enables performances of this charming movement, never previously heard.

The Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children – usually called in short “Foundling Hospital” – was founded by royal permission in 1739, following many years’ effort by the captain and businessman Thomas Coram (1668–1751) to found such an institution in London. In the 1740s two matching buildings were built, separate yet parallel to each other (one for boys, the other for girls), which were linked behind from ca. 1748 by the construction of a chapel. On 4 May 1749 Handel attended a committee meeting of the orphanage, at which he proposed a benefit concert in aid of the interior decoration of the chapel, which was still incomplete. The concert took place there on 27 May in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales and other prominent personalities. According to newspaper reports, this was received with great satisfaction and was also a financial success. Handel opened it with two works which he had composed shortly before for the celebrations of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle: the “Fireworks Music” HWV 351 and the “Peace Anthem”. These were followed by outstanding arias and choral movements from his oratorio Solomon HWV 67 premiered just a few weeks before, and to end, the four choruses from the new “Foundling Hospital Anthem” with texts from the “King James Bible” and the “Book of Common Prayer”, which reflected the aims of the charitable institution and its patrons.

The directors of the Hospital planned the official opening of the completed orphanage chapel for as early as the beginning of May 1750, but had to postpone that date several times. Handel began with the revision of the “Foundling Hospital Anthem” in spring or summer 1751, presumably because he believed that the opening of the chapel was now imminent. At any rate, he must have completed the revision before he lost his sight in the summer of 1752. The second version of HWV 268, which was finally performed on 16 April 1753 by John Christopher Smith in Handel’s presence, is much more extensive than the first of 1749. Handel increased the original number of movements by inserting a tenor aria before No. 1, an alto aria between Nos. 1 and 2, and a duet for two sopranos between Nos. 3 and 4. The two versions of 1749 and 1753 are printed in HHA Vol. III/14 complete, and separately from each other; the original version is still awaiting a modern performance.

Stephan Blaut
(from [t]akte 1/2026)
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)